Oh dear OG, this is so great I am going to save it.
Very clear and to the heart of the problem.
We used to call this “The Big Lie” strategy.
If you say something that is utterly absurd and say it often enough, a significant amount of people are going to look at their TVs and say “Wow, that’s weird. But you know… it make sense.” and come away believing.
This is one of the reasons we have this odd 33-33-33 mixture in USA politics. It is just human nature for some folks to just believe stuff they hear.
I am not certain how we are supposed to ‘solve’ this weakness in the system.
Maybe we should just leave it for our children to do so.
Maybe that’s why the 1% are acting like such buttheads – even subconsciously – because it serves as a stimulus to wake up the rest of us to do what needs doing to make positive changes that will benefit the majority.
You should stop listening to whatever moron you heard this argument from, then. Asking for a rule change after you’ve already broken the existing rules shows less character and honesty than simply breaking the rules – the former includes the latter, with the additional aggravating factor of excuse-making.
Everyone who is surprised by this fact, raise your lower right hand.
I think this was discussed upthread, but in case it wasn’t: the “open marriage” conversation was between Gingrich and his second wife, Marianne. He had an affair with her while still married to his first wife (the one who had cancer), and at the time of the “open marriage” discussion, he was already cheating on Marianne with Callista, to whom he is now married. The point of the conversation (as Marianne recalls it) was that he wanted to continue a relationship with Callista, who was evidently pretty openminded and didn’t care if he saw other women, while Marianne evidently wanted him all to herself - which he didn’t consider satisfactory. So what he asked for, if her story is accurate, was explicit permission to continue the affair without getting divorced. It wasn’t a conversation ahead of time and an offer to end the affair doesn’t seem to have been on the table. I think even a very deluded Gingrich supporter would struggle to find any character or honesty there.
And how many will sympathize with a woman whose husband left for a younger woman.
cite please.
And you think she shared them with Gingrich’s daughters from his first wife? The one he left for this woman?
Yeah, I agree that Gingrich wasn’t asking his wife to be a swinger. He was asking his wife to accept his infidelity. WTF do you think an open marriage is, if it isn’t one where you accept each other’s infidelity.
cite? I have also heard that his first wife wanted the divorce (presumably because of the cheating)
Well, it certainly seems like you are failing to understand why it is more hypocritical for a “conservative” “family values” candidate to cheat on his first wife and then cheat again on his second wife than it is for someone who is not a conservative family values candidate.
What strikes me as odd is that someone like Clinton and Weiner gets crucified when they cheat on their wives while Gingrich becomes a leading candidate for the Republican nomination.
I bet Clinton was wondering the same thing.
Or we could make lying about material facts by public officials and candidates a crime or at least sanctionable by the FEC.
I don’t know why all you people are attacking Mr. Gingrich for his infidelities. No matter what he has done in the past, his family values are better than the current white house occupant. At least Mr Gingrich is a Christian.
Except, you mean, for Nixon, who was in point of fact an excellent and popular president (see '72 landslide referendum on his first term in office) prior to the press, after decades of effort, successfully hounding him from office. And except for Ronald Reagan, arguably the best and most effective and most inspirational president of the 20th century. And except for Bush 1, an Eisenhower-esque president apart from kicking Hussein’s ass out of Kuwait. And except for GWB, who, unlike his predecessor, did a superb job of protecting us from terrorists, and whose defeat of Hussein and subsequent liberation of Iraq very likely played an initial, catalytic role in the Arab Spring uprisings which have occurred since.
Other than for those guys, though, you’re right. No decent pubbies since the one famous for doing nothing - which of course speaks volumes as to your definition of decency in Republican presidents. A definition which, curiously enough, mirrors my own with regard to Democrat presidents and explains my relative lack of complaint about Barack Obama.
He did that by cheating. Specifically, CREEP successfully sabotaged the primary campaigns of all Dem presidential contenders but McGovern, who was judged easiest to beat. (Watergate was only the tail-end of this.) You can read the story in Nixonland, by Rick Perlstein. You can also read how private-citizen-lawyer Nixon sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks from behind the scenes in early 1968, just so the Vietnam War would still be there as an issue for him to run against in November. He wasn’t just a bad POTUS, he was a bad person.
